A campaign of insinuation and insult has targeted Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, and in a country where all power flows from the top downward, his boss, President Vladimir Putin, has done nothing all winter to stop it.
Medvedev's failings get an airing in the press, and nasty anonymous video documentaries accuse him of all sorts of treachery. Slights and humiliations are visited on him by the Kremlin, seat of the presidential apparatus. Governors go around him. Bureaucrats ignore him. Putin, in public, takes little care to hide his disdain.
Medvedev responds by repeatedly trying to demonstrate his loyalty to Putin, which draws ridicule from politicians and pundits alike. As a consequence, the Cabinet of ministers that Medvedev chairs is barely able to function.